Sunday, December 26, 2010

Hey MakeUseOf! I thought I would share with you what I have learned about Blogger’s Blogspot blogging platform over the last 8 months or so. I jumped into the new Blogger almost immediately after its beta launch and then I wanted to customize it – You know, make it my own.

So I went out looking for how to do it. And here is that wisdom I uncovered. Consider it a gift from me to you. Poor old Blogger gets a bad wrap, namely because people do not know how to manipulate it. I hope this article helps you guys out and if you have any others please let me know in the comments…

1. Removing The Blogger Bar

I hated the blogger bar across the top of my Web site because it didn’t really go with my template and I already had a Google search bar integrated. So I went on a mission to remove it and de-bloggerify my blog. I searched far and wide and for some reason kept hitting a dead end. It turns out that the code used to change the old blogger templates no longer works! So after tracking down the CSS changes here is how I did it:

All you need to do is add the following CSS to your template under edit HTML. You need to put in anywhere in your template between the <style> tags.

#navbar-iframe { height:0px; visibility:hidden; display:none; }

2. Add a randomizer to show different quotes, graphics or html.

I used to be really jealous of Feedburner’s awesome quotes that change on refresh. I went out looking for my own way to do something similar. It was a long and grueling task but I found it (Well actually my buddy Mike Commodore found it). Check out how I use a free Randomizer ASP application to get my own random geeky quotes and ads to display. I have the quotes on display in my subheader here and the Wicked Tee’s Ad is also on a separate randomizer. To download the RandomQ program hit their website here. For detailed instructions on how we got it to work using iFrame’s check out these step by step instructions.

3. Recent comments

Use this script to achieve a WordPress-esque Recent Comments module for your side bar! Start some riots among your readers! Let them know what others have to say. This site provides a widget creator that I used to make my recent comments module. I found that after adding this, it actually encouraged people to comment more frequently. I don’t know if they like seeing their name up in lights or if they read what others wrote and want to kick in their two cents… But either way it has increased commenting by about 70%!

4. That’s a lot of comments!!

Replace your commenting system with Intense Debate for more control over comments with a social flare. It is really easy to do, check out this information from their web site:

“Interested in the comments your friends make? What if there was a way to follow your friends and be notified when, where, and also what they comment? Intense Debate provides this functionality through RSS feeds for each user. Subscribers will be notified in their RSS readers with a direct link to view the context surrounding the comment as well. Give it a try!

Also, don’t waste anymore time checking back in on a blog to see if anyone responded to your comment. Now you can get email notifications of replies to your comments, letting you know when the conversation continues while you’re gone.

5. Adding inline ads

Want to add advertisements into your posts for maximum exposure? By having your ads out their in front of peoples face they just might click them more often. I am not a big believer in ads. But maybe you are and by following these instructions from MyDigitialLife you can add adds in your post between post or even in the footer. It is not hard to do and involves a little modification to your template. Due to the fact that Blogger parses out some code and changes some characters when you enter it manually in the html this will show you a workaround for that.From their web site:

6. Use Feedburner

Feedburner lets you “burn your feed” and add feed flare. Before they were a Google company they were awesome but now that they are a part of the Google they are even better. I use Feedburner for feed statistics, monitoring users subscriptions, managing our daily email blast list and adding feed flare enhancements to your feed. This is a MUST do for any blog. Almost a no brainer. Blogger lets you specify your Feedburner information in their ‘Site Feed’ tab inside your dashboard. Once there you will see a place to plug in your Feeburners URL.

7. Add additional pages (Add links to older posts that you can customize like a contact page.)

This is one thing I always hear people complaining about blogger. But I can’t add a second page or even a page for contact information… Wahhh Wahhh Wahhh. How about a little creativity? For this hack all I did was create some posts labeled About Us Contact Us etc. And then made their published dates way back when and linked to the posts from my template. Result – pseudo additional pages!

8. Use a real domain name instead of blogger’s default naming conventions

In the beginning before we knew any better we though using a free service like Blogger meant being locked into certain things like the sub-domain name off of Blogspot. Google lets you “Brand” your blog and link up a real domain name to forward to your Blogspot address. But they did one better and redirect their address’s to yours. So even if you type in http://whatuwantnow.blogspot.com you will wind up at http://www.whatuwantnow.com! Sweet.

9. Add Instant Messaging to your Blogger blog.

Want to chat with your users real time? I added Plugoo to my site, linked it up with my AIM account and I am in constant contact with users looking for help or just wanting to say what’s up. This is not for everyone but I found it so cool I now turn my AOL IM mobile when I am AFK and my IM’s hit me via Text message on my Smart Phone.

10. Update you blog daily and have quality content.

And the last but certainly not least Blogger tip/hack is not a hack at all but a piece of advice . Update your blog on a daily basis. Because that is all the readers want now isn’t it? Would you read your own site – if it wasn’t yours?? If your answer is no, then you got some serious re-thinking to do!

Do you have any additional tips or tricks for blogger or other blog hosts? We would love to hear about it in the comments!